NFT Studio Blue Monster Games Acquires Legends Of Aria Developer Citadel Studios

Blue Monster Games is finalizing a deal to acquire Virgina-based indie developer Citadel Studios, along with their Kickstarted MMORPG Legends of Aria and in-house Shards Engine. As part of the acquisition, Citadel’s founder Derek Brinkmann will be joining Blue Monster as the NFT game developer’s CTO.

Blue Monster Games is a Florida-based NFT game development studio currently working on an NFT metaverse game called Realms of Ethernity. The game is powered by the RETH token which players can use to buy plots of land, mounts, boats, and other equipment that they’ll need to survive in the game. To raise the stakes even further, players run the risk of losing their NFT possessions in any of the game’s dangerous and lawless metaverse worlds.

Once the deal pushes through, Blue Monster will be updating Legends of Aria with blockchain mechanics in what is being called as the gaming industries first-ever “metaversification” of a traditional non-blockchain game.

“Realms of Ethernity isn’t just a regular metaverse game, it’s going to be the metaverse to eat the gaming world,” touted Blue Monster Co-founder Joseph Rubin in the official press release. “Our acquisition of Citadel Studios is the first step towards that vision. We will bring metaverse elements to their existing games, which will then become a full part of the Realms of Ethernity metaverse! Expect to see many more of these kinds of acquisitions from us in the coming months.”

“The acquisition will also mark the first time that an existing AAA game will be updated with blockchain and Web3 mechanics, thus ‘metaversifying’ it with NFTs and token-based in-game currencies,” added the studio. “Legends of Aria is expected to be the first entry to Realms of Ethernity’s ‘meta-metaverse’ concept, and RETH holders will be given exclusive access to the soon-to-be-announced Legends of Aria’s IDO.”

Legends of Aria was Kickstarted in 2014 back when it was called Shards Online. Citadel Studios managed to raise over $100,000 for the game which offered a platform for players to create and run their own servers with their own set of rules. The game later rebranded to Legends of Aria following its shift to more traditional MMORPG gameplay and officially launched on Steam in July 2020.

Citadel, however, has struggled to draw new players into the game and keep existing ones interested. Over the past year, the game has seen a rapid decline in player numbers. The fact that the game hasn’t received a major update since September 2020 also hasn’t helped to bring in the crowds. In 2021, the studio announced that they will be rebooting the game as Legends of Aria 2 and that they were publishing another game, a survival sandbox MMO called CODEX.